Neighborhood Pressure
June 7, 2016
Of all the forces working to cause adolescent youth to focus on a single sport to the exclusion of others, one of the most insidious and impactful is “neighborhood pressure.” It’s “keeping up with the Joneses” applied to youth sports instead of house, car and boat.
Some parents feel like bad people if they do not only facilitate but also force their child to keep climbing the sports ladder, moving from neighborhood team to select team to elite team, and from a season experience to a year-round commitment, and from local participation to a schedule that requires out-of-town travel for both games and practices.
“If the neighbors do this for their son or daughter, what kind of parent am I if I don’t do this for my child?”
Actually, the answer is that you are the smart parent – one who has read the literature and has learned that early and intense sport specialization is not best for your child’s future in sports or in life. Sport specialization is a less healthy experience – physically, emotionally and socially – for children ages 6 to 12; and it is no more likely to result in success in high school sports or a college athletic scholarship than a balanced youth sports experience.
All the intense specialization is certain to do is cost much more money than a college scholarship is worth, assuage parents’ consciences and give them topics to talk about at neighborhood gatherings.
Summer Football Safety
July 23, 2018
(This blog first appeared on MHSAA.com on June 23, 2017.)
Across the U.S. this summer, school-age football players are flocking to camps conducted by colleges and commercial interests. They get outfitted in full gear and launch themselves into drills and skills work.
Unlike the start of the interscholastic football season, the players usually do this without several days of acclimatization to avoid heat illness, and without limits on player-to-player contact to reduce head injuries.
Required precautions of the school season are generally ignored at non-school summer camps.
One notable exception to this foolish behavior is found in Michigan where the Michigan High School Athletic Association prohibits member schools’ student-athletes from using full equipment and participating in full-contact activities outside the high school football season. This is not a recent change; it’s been the MHSAA’s explicit policy for more than four decades.
And it’s a policy that has never been more in style and in favor than it is today.